INF385T UX Prototyping
HW Instructions
Fall 2023
Ninety percent of your grade comes from the following work. The other ten percent consists of peer reviews, described in the syllabus. Also note that the syllabus describes the attendance policy. That can negatively impact the grade you earn.
Milestones (35 percent of your grade)
Overview
For seven of the weeks we meet, you will submit a milestone in Canvas. Note that all work is to be submitted via Canvas. Don’t send me any attachments in emails or I will deduct points from the relevant score!
I will assign six groups of five.
You will complete a prototype milestone by Tuesday at 9pm via Canvas, via a plain text document (not a word processing document) containing the URL of the page for the current milestone on your group website. That website will contain (A) text describing your current milestone and (B) a link to your actual prototype, for example on Figma or Framer. Only one person from your group will submit the plain text document to Canvas, and it will be named with that person’s initials in lowercase followed by dot txt. In other words, if I were to make such a submission, it would be called mm.txt and would not be in Word or pdf format but rather plain text, as can be generated in any text editor such as notepad or textedit. There should be only one line in the file, and that line should contain only one URL, so that I can automatically parse all the submitted files.
Details
The milestones are mostly connected to each other, with the eventual goal of a portfolio piece.
Milestone 1 — accessibility
A skilled designer embraces the inclusion of all individuals, considering their diverse needs and physical abilities within the design process. To help you grasp the concept of ‘Design for All,’ we’ll be evaluating a website for its accessibility. This exercise aims to sensitize you to the importance of accessibility from the outset, so that when you craft your own prototypes, you naturally incorporate accessibility principles instead of needing to retrofit them later. We’re excited to embark on this journey of creating designs that warmly welcome everyone.
You will run an accessibility check on a website of your choosing. Research on different accessibility checkpoints and evaluate if the website you choose is satisfying all the checkpoints. You can use this checklist to help you https://www.w3.org/WAI/tips/designing/
- Evaluate three pages of any website using at least 2 Checkpoints , e.g., non text contrast, keyboard friendly website, e.t.c.
- Let us know if the page satisifies the accesibility checkpoints and explain them.
- Make a report of your observations and discuss on how the website could have been designed better to satisfy your observations.
- Answer these 2 questions:
- Why do you think accessibility is important while designing interfaces?
- In a sentence or two, how do you describe an ideal website(interface)?
- Deliver your analysis as a pdf report, named xx.pdf, where the xx is replaced by the submitter’s initials, and the report should be in a PDF format submitted to Canvas.
FAQ
For each page we evaluate, can we use the same Checkpoint on each page? NO!
What happens if our website is perfect and is completely accessible? Try another website.
Other tips
- Provide the reader context and your reasoning for your evaluation.
- It would be valuable to see your justification and logic.
- Refer back to the original issue when presenting your solution.
- Consider inclusive design.
- Visual impairment errors that you can notice are comparatively easy to fix.
Milestone 2 — using inspiration
In this milestone we will be learning the importance of getting inspired from scenarios and stories. Below are 5 pictures / stories.